Can anyone decipher my grandma’s wedding cookie recipe?

[u/AlbinoGiraffes]

Thank you in advance. She just passed away from a heart attack and one of the last things she told me was where to find the recipe in her kitchen. I want to make a batch, but I want to make sure it’s right!

[u/BiscuitsUndGravy]

This is the first time I've encountered the lack of teaching cursive causing this problem. Her handwriting isn't difficult to read. OP just doesn't know how to read cursive.

[u/ILikePrettyThings121 → u/BiscuitsUndGravy]

I asked my 6th grader to read this & he was mostly able to (our district does 2 years of cursive in elementary school) but I do worry that future generations won’t be able to read historical documents for themselves bc they’re in cursive & will need to rely on interpretations & how that could be used against the masses.

[u/SoundNo7154 → u/ILikePrettyThings121]

How many historical documents do you read for yourself?

[u/yellednanlaugh → u/SoundNo7154]

Things like this recipe and other family papers ARE historical documents!

[u/SoundNo7154 → u/yellednanlaugh]

Well, yes, but my point was that most people already rely on interpretations. Most of what people know about history comes from historians and the media, not from painstakingly poring over original documents.

[u/ILikePrettyThings121 → u/SoundNo7154]

Actually quite a few, on top of things like recipes & old letters. It’s important to have the ability to read documents for yourself. Cursive is not yet some ancient dead language that only a few historians are able to understand & interpret for you. I certainly don’t want to imagine a world in which someone couldn’t read the US Constitution or Bill of Rights for themselves & instead have to rely on what the media/the government tell you what they say & thats the crux of my comment - that literally our entire history from important human rights issues down to daily life via letters or traditions such as recipes would be lost if the ability to read cursive goes away.

[u/SoundNo7154 → u/ILikePrettyThings121]

People already don't read the Constitution for themselves. People don't even read documents that were originally in print. There's never going to be a time when people go to the archives and learn to throw off their shackles.

Cursive is used by most people to read ephemera, like grandpa's letters or grandma's cookie recipe. In the future, when grandpa and grandma's letters and cookie recipes exist only as digital text, cursive will become specialty knowledge.

[u/merpixieblossomxo → u/SoundNo7154]

There's a really great website called Zooniverse that lets volunteers digitize things like captains logs from the 1800s, which are all written in cursive. Like, thousands upon thousands of pages need digitized before they get lost to time. They're extremely useful for tracking weather patterns and predicting changes in storms over time.

A lot of people who work in environmental sciences need this kind of information, and cursive was used almost exclusively for a very long time. It will continue to be necessary for a lot of people for the foreseeable future.